RealityForge.org: Rails Plugin to Help Debug Views

Rails Plugin to Help Debug Views

Peter Donald — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 14:02:00 +1100

The debug_view_helper plugin was developed to make it easy to add debug information into your views. It was derived from techniques described in HowtoDebugViews and it makes it possible to expose the followng following debug data;

Request Parameters
Session Variables
Flash Variables
Assigned Template Variables

Typically you add code such as the following to the bottom of your layout that exposes the debug button in development mode.

<% if RAILS_ENV == 'development' %>
<center>
  <button onclick="show_debug_popup(); return false;">
    Show debug popup
  </button>
</center>
<%= debug_popup %>
<% end %>

You can grab the plugin from subversion at;

http://www.realityforge.org/svn/code/debug-view-helper/trunk/

Update: Added the ability to add inline debug information via the following. Suggestion by John Dell.

<% if RAILS_ENV == 'development' %>
<%= debug_inline %>
<% end %>

"Rails Plugin to Help Debug Views" by Jeremy Wohl

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 06:08:33 +1100

I couldn’t get this working in Rails 1.1, w/o the following patch. There’s probably a better way to do it.

x/view_debug_helper.rb 2006-03-31 13:34:38.000000000 -0800 + view_debug_helper.rb 2006-03-31 13:35:22.000000000 -0800 @ -44,7 +44,7 @ end end

- dump_vars(script,’Session Variables:’,@controller.instance_variable_get(”@data”)) + dump_vars(script,’Session Variables:’,@controller.instance_variable_get(’@session’).instance_variable_get(”@data”)) dump_vars(script,’Flash Variables:’,@controller.instance_variable_get(”@flash”)) dump_vars(script,’Assigned Template Variables:’,@controller.assigns) script << add(‘‘)

"Rails Plugin to Help Debug Views" by Violet

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:56:46 +1100

Thanks for pointing this out. I was not aware of this.